


every secret, every burden they keep

by oneorangeshoelace



Category: Pacific Rim (2013)
Genre: Insomnia, M/M, Trans Character
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2014-12-22
Updated: 2014-12-22
Packaged: 2018-03-02 18:57:47
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,450
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2822645
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/oneorangeshoelace/pseuds/oneorangeshoelace
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>But when that stopped being enough, Newt just started making up reasons to hate Hermann, and they became part of Newt’s perception of him, only partially divorced from what he actually knew about Hermann. In his rare moments of self-awareness on the matter, he figured they were kind of like the headcanons he had had for characters when he was active on Tumblr, mostly in the years before K-Day.</p>
            </blockquote>





	every secret, every burden they keep

**Author's Note:**

> As always, this was inspired by a conversation with Megan, who can be found here on AO3 as letssoakemforcrutchy, and on Tumblr under the same URL for fic or nobodytoldthehorse for his main blog. This is also actually somewhat of a birthday gift for her!

One of Newt’s favorite things to do when Hermann was being aggravating, and he had been really fucking aggravating lately, was to list all the things that pissed him off about Hermann. What he didn’t fully want to admit to himself, though, was that the list was kind of short, and there were only so many ways he could break up standard traits into smaller traits—although he was very good at that. He could spend a good amount of time breaking up “He’s imperious” into he’s imperious while standing up, he’s imperious while sitting down, he’s imperious while he’s not facing me, he’s imperious over e-mail, he’s imperious when he’s eating, hell, he’s probably imperious when he’s asleep, too.  
But when that stopped being enough, Newt just started making up reasons to hate Hermann, and they became part of Newt’s perception of him, only partially divorced from what he actually knew about Hermann. In his rare moments of self-awareness on the matter, he figured they were kind of like the headcanons he had had for characters when he was active on Tumblr, mostly in the years before K-Day.  
So here was a little bit of the extended, fabricated list: He’s a frickin’ cishet man, very narrow-minded, he reminds me so much of my goddamn grandma that he probably fucking hates queer people as much as that old bat did… Newt knew he was not being strictly fair about Hermann, but hell, he knew he had to be close enough to the truth for it to not matter very much. 

Hermann was really fucking depressed. He knew he had been for about a month, but he didn’t know what he could do about it. The anxiety of feeling like the fate of the world rested on his shoulders (along with the stark knowledge that this feeling was not entirely wrong) would feed into his depression, and then he would get more anxiety about how unproductive his depression was making him, which would feed back into his depression…  
Enough. There had to be something he could do to break the negative feedback loop. He suddenly remembered a tip Dr. Lightcap had told him, long before the PPDC laid her off (God, he missed her). It was just a little thing she did to break herself out of a funk—and it had been a while since Hermann had done anything for himself—but, egh. He didn’t know how Newt would react to something like that. He was pretty sure that little arschloch had some…for lack of a better word, dudebro-esque tendencies, and he worried that any significantly negative reaction from his sole coworker would send him into a deeper spiral of depression.  
No, fuck it. He would not let Newton Geiszler’s opinion dictate a single one of his decisions, nor the way he felt about himself. Never, ever, ever.  
So that was it, then. At some point that day he would have to go to the drugstore—oh, God, he would have to leave the Shatterdome and interact with teeming masses of human beings. No, okay, it would be fine. He was pretty sure he had some Xanax somewhere in his room, anyway, although he hadn’t taken any in a while.  
Okay. After he had accomplished something today, he would go.  
He hoped he would be able to accomplish anything at all that day. 

Newt knew that a lot of people probably assumed that his Kaiju tattoos had started on his forearms, and he knew a lot of people probably thought they ended there, too. But he knew that his first tattoo had been to cover up the two horizontal scars on his chest, one across each pectoral. He found a kind of grim satisfaction in layering his greatest fear and fascination over his greatest insecurity, and making both kind of beautiful. At any rate, he was a lot happier with his body these days.

Hermann wondered what color he would pick. He was fairly sure Dr. Lightcap had favored a wine red shade, but that seemed both too traditional and too intense. He was partial towards earth tones, but he felt that wasn’t really appropriate for this kind of thing.  
Well, he would figure something out.  
God, his heart was racing just thinking about it. He felt like he was committing a crime. 

“Dr. Geiszler!”  
Newt twitched a little as his intense concentration was broken, and he wondered who the hell was calling him by that name. Everyone in the Shatterdome called him Newt—well, except for Hermann, when he was in a bad mood. And Hermann had been in a bad mood a lot lately.  
“Yee-es, Dr. Gottlieb?” Newt replied, without turning around.  
“Did you hear me?”  
“Well, no, Hermann, I was actually concentrating on my work. What do you want?”  
He heard Hermann exhale gustily, the way he did when he was actually trying to control his temper. “I need to leave the Shatterdome for about an hour. Can you convey that information to anyone who might ask after me?”  
“Sure, dude. Where are you going?”  
“None of your business,” Hermann snapped.  
“Okay, dude. Fine. Are you coming back to work when you get back?”  
“I don’t know yet,” Hermann said coolly.  
“All righty then. Well, let me know so I know what I’m making excuses for, okay? You have fun, kiddo. Don’t do anything I wouldn’t do!”  
“Newton, that is atrocious advice.”  
“Aw, quit bullying me. I had a traumatic childhood.”  
“Goodbye, Newton.”

Damn, but Hong Kong was much more crowded than Hermann remembered. He wondered briefly when the last time was that he actually left the Shatterdome, but quickly decided it was probably better not to think about it. He was just going down to the drugstore on the corner, anyway—it wasn’t even that much of an excursion. God, but there were a lot of people. At least none of them had knocked into his cane or his leg yet, as that was always completely awful—physically and mentally painful.  
When he checked out at the drugstore, his cashier gave him a soft little smile at his purchase. Hermann left the store as quickly as possible.  
Just seeing the Shatterdome’s looming presence as he stepped back outside was enough to make him realize that he really could not go back to work today. He sent Newt a quick e-mail from his phone and went straight to his room.  
He sat down, took a deep breath, and unscrewed the bottle of nail polish.  
“Hey, Hermann, have you—“ Newt’s question died in his throat as he turned around and saw Hermann’s hand as it was resting against the back of his head in thought.  
“Have I what, Newton? Dear God, finish your bloody sentences.”  
Newton tore his eyes away from Hermann’s nail polish and cleared his throat. “Sorry, I got—distracted. I was going to ask you if you’ve seen Tendo yet today, I was going to tell him a story I just remembered, but, like, I haven’t seen him around.”  
Hermann had slipped his hand into his pocket by now. “No, Newton, I have not seen Mr. Choi yet today. Kindly get back to work and stop thinking about stories, there are billions of lives on the line here. My increase in productivity cannot make up for your decrease.”  
“Oh, yes, thank you for reminding me, Hermann, the reality of our horrific lives had somehow slipped my mind!” Newt snapped.  
Hermann silently took his hand out of his pocket and picked up a piece of chalk to continue writing. Newt got a glimpse of Hermann’s nail polish again for a moment before his fingers grasped the chalk. Was that black nail polish? No, maybe it was a little lighter than that—and it looked like it might have had some glitter in it? Newt certainly didn’t peg Hermann for the punk type—but then again, he also hadn’t pegged him for the nail polish type. He knew it was 2025 and everything, but straight cis men generally still did not wear nail polish, especially if they weren’t trying to make the kind of fashion statements that Hermann never made.  
So…oh my god, was Hermann queer? There went that headcanon. Well, that was obnoxious. Newt had a natural inclination to give second chances to people who he had clashed with if he found out they were LGBT somehow, because he figured that each of them should watch out for each other, but Hermann—absolutely fucking not. Newt was far too petty for that, he knew.  
But still. He had to know. Newt was nothing if not dangerously curious. But how do you ask a coworker you’ve hated for a decade if they’re queer? Like, without being creepy—without being invasive, or having Hermann think he was being insulted if he was cishet and homophobic, or (the most horrific idea) Hermann thinking that Newt was somehow hitting on him.  
Okay but like. He had to know, though.  
Well, he would figure something out.  
Hermann was glad to have had a day productive enough to match his standards for the first time in weeks, but now he couldn’t sleep. Wonderful. Well, this was nothing new. He would get over it. After a few frustrated hours, he got out of bed to test his leg and decided it was worth it to make it down to the canteen to see if anyone else was awake at two in the morning. It happened more often that he had originally thought it would—plenty of people in the Shatterdome had a complicated relationship with sleep, after what they had all been through.  
He didn’t usually talk to whoever he found. Hermann didn’t actually know many people in the Shatterdome that well, and he was not generally fond of trying to navigate social niceties while he was exhausted. Aside from that, however, there were a lot of people in the Shatterdome who just did not want to talk to him. Hermann’s reputation as a temperamental, finicky asshole preceded him. Hermann couldn’t quite decide if his reputation was deserved or if it was all Newt’s fault for bringing out the worst in him. Generally, though, he would just try to make it clear that he wasn’t going to try to talk to someone if he noticed they looked spooked at his entrance.  
There wasn’t anyone in the canteen tonight, but that didn’t mean no one would be along. Hermann sighed to himself and then decided to enjoy the silence for now, making a mug of tea from the supplies that were always available to the many known insomniacs in the Shatterdome. At about 2:15, he heard footsteps and looked up. Eeurgh. Newt wasn’t his least favorite person to run into in the middle of the night, but he certainly wasn’t Hermann’s favorite, either. He glanced down at the glittery dark blue of his nails to steel his nerves before Newt plopped down across from him, reminding himself that Newt could actually at times be surprisingly pleasant under the effect that the natural hush the wee hours seemed to bestow on people.  
“Hey, Hermann.”  
“…Hello.”  
“What’s up?”  
“Well...I can’t sleep.”  
“Cool, cool. Or, I mean, not cool, but I mean…me neither.”  
“Yes. I assumed as much.”  
Hermann took a sip of his tea. Newt just stared at him, or more accurately, at his hands.  
“Hey, are you—” Newt started. “No, never mind.”  
“Newton. You know it bothers me when you don’t finish your thoughts.”  
“No, it was nothing, it’s—it’s none of my business, actually. Like, at all. So never mind.”  
“No, please, I’m dying to know what you were going to ask,” Hermann said flatly.  
“Well, I mean, it’s just, I was just wondering—Are you LGBT or something? See, no, that’s none of my business at all. Your nails, I mean—well your nails are, uh—I’ve never seen you with—dark blue is my favorite color, have I ever told you that? Probably not, I mean I don’t know why I would, but—”  
“Dr. Geiszler, I think you need to breathe.”  
Newt sucked in a breath of air, and Hermann closed his eyes, pinching the bridge of his nose.  
“If you must know, Dr. Geiszler, I’m agender,” Hermann said stiffly, breaking the silence. “If that’s what you were getting at, that is. If you were asking after my sexuality that is even less of your business and even less related to what I do with my nails—”  
“No, no no! I was just wondering—that’s cool, that’s uh, very cool. Great. Uh. Wait—shit! Have I been misgendering you like this entire time? Ah fuck, I’m so sorry!”  
“No, I am actually usually most comfortable with he/him/his pronouns.”  
“Oh! Okay, good. Phew!”  
“Newton—have you somehow never met a transgender person before? You’re being very jumpy, even for you.”  
“Ha! No, that’s not—I’m—well, I’m trans, too. I’m a trans man.”  
“Oh.”  
“I…you’re the only one in the PPDC who knows, so…Well, I think it might be in my files over at medical, but I mean I’ve never told anyone. So. Please don’t. Tell anyone.”  
“Understood, Newton. I—I would appreciate if you would do the same for me. I’m afraid I haven’t come out to anyone since Dr. Lightcap.”  
“Oh man, Dr. Lightcap. She was so cool. What a lady.”  
“Yes.”  
“So, uh. Cool. Good? Anyway—”  
“Let’s…get you some chamomile? You’ve been awake for about seventy-six straight hours, I believe.”  
“Yeah, just about. Hey, sorry about all that. I’m kind of a mess lately—well, in general, but especially…lately.”  
“No, it’s fine, you’re…fine.”  
“All right, cool.” Newt got up to go get a mug. He paused for a second. “Hey, Hermann?”  
“Yes?”  
“Thanks for…I guess thanks for trusting me with something like that. I know I kind of squeezed it out of you, but—just thanks, I guess, and I wanted you to know that—that you can trust me with this. And maybe with whatever else, if there’s anything else.”  
“Oh. Well…thank you, Newton. The same to you.”  
“Hey, cool. Well, listen—exhaustion just hit me like a freight train, so I’m gonna turn in, okay? Or do you want me to stay up a little longer?”  
“No, no, please, embrace sleep when you can get it. I will be just fine.”  
“Okay, well—G’night, Hermann.”  
“Good night, Newton. Sleep well.”  
“Hey, you too.”  
Then Hermann was alone in the canteen with a mug of rapidly cooling tea. He furrowed his brow briefly as he finished processing everything that had just happened. Then he smiled.

**Author's Note:**

> I think I'm going to have a Chapter 2, but I'm not sure yet. If I change the status to Complete, assume that I've decided to leave it as a stand-alone work.


End file.
